RIP Wayne Guest

[naugastyle]

Hi, I run a small nonprofit social enterprise. I very recently set up a Paypal account linked to my Kasikorn account, although I've had a US Paypal account for many years. I'm sorry if this is an obvious question, but I'm really afraid to make a mistake with this.

A friend of mine is buying some of our products, and wants to pay by Paypal. I've seen people on this forum insisting money must be coverted to baht first, but why? When I send a bank transfer, I send in USD (well, my bank doesn't give me a choice anyway). Should my friend be sending payment in baht? I am checking how the conversion works when filling out the sending form, and while 50USD is 1494.25 at xe.com/ucc, if I send in baht in Paypal I need only 1452 to get to a 50USD equivalent. So the same amount of USD from my US Paypal account becomes 40 baht less that is sent, BUT if I sent as USD am I hit with an even worse conversion on the receiving end?

As our shop is not online yet for the general public, the buyers & donors are only my friends. So I want to keep the fees low for both sender and receiver.

In addition, I've seen people talk about Paypal account freezes, but am not clear if there is a specific trigger for these freezes. For this small business, we are hoping for more wholesale customers and just occasional individual customers. Is it large amounts of money coming in that sends off alarm bells, or is it kind of random?

Thanks for any advice.

Edited February 12, 2013 by naugastyle

[CharlieH]

^{The more I read your post the more I get confused and basically dont understand what your problem is.}

^{You can choose what currency you want to use inside Paypal.}

The exchange rate offered by Paypal when withdrawing into your Thai account in baht is AWFUL !! you can count on losing 10% in rate and fees.

As for account freezes, that depends how you operate your account, if you receive a large payment for a small item its suspicious, personally I've never encountered any issues in over 15 years of Paypal.

Edited February 12, 2013 by CharlieH

[naugastyle]

The main thing I'm asking has been stated plainly in this forum multiple times: that you must convert to baht before sending. i.e. don't send 10USD to someone, send them 300THB.

But the conversion goes through Paypal anyway. Is there an actual difference in rate whether the conversion is done from the US Paypal site while sending vs. the Thai Paypal site while withdrawing? And if you're sending money from your own account in the US to your own account in Thailand, then it's not a matter of simply forcing someone else to pay the fees.

I can understand that as the receiver, if I get money in baht I don't have to deal with conversion and I have no fees to withdraw. But didn't the sender get hit with fees for doing the conversion? And is it the same amount of fees I would have paid as the receiver, or is it less? I'm just trying to figure out why it makes a difference.

Edited February 12, 2013 by naugastyle

[montrii]

I agree with one poster: any way I've seen it, the PayPal conversion rate is awful. I get around that by getting money in dollars in my US account, then withdrawing cash $400 at a time with my US PayPal debit card (using Aeon here in Thailand, so no local fee). That way the conversion rate is entirely outside PayPal, and much better, and PayPal only charges $1 per ATM withdrawal. The cash I take out immediately goes into my Thai Bank account, which is right around the corner from the Aeon ATM. Of course, if you're dealing with large sums of money, this may not be viable, but for my cheapo world it works great.